Nightblindness

While going through some old email today, I found this one. At 11.32 p.m. on Friday, September 19, 2008, I sent this to a really close friend of mine. Nearly seven months on, I can scarcely believe that things were ever the way they were between us. Upon roughly three seconds of reflection, reading this made me realise that Fourth Year has been about extreme happiness and extreme sadness, with very little in between.

Here goes.

***

"I write this to you on an impulse, completely unprepared about what I want to say, how I want to say it or, indeed, why I'm saying it at all.

There's a song called "Nightblindness" by David Gray, which I'm sending you. It's a song about a lot of things and is, in fact, so beautiful in its simplicity that it could really mean anything at all. It has also, in
the four years that I've listened to it, never failed to pull me through the hardest of times.

David Gray is a singer/songwriter who was practically lost to the music world for most of the 1990s because record company after record company would seem to take cruel pleasure in opening doors for him, only to slam them in his face when he got too close. His cause was ultimately championed by a few underground music journos in England and, in what can only be described as the greatest word-of-mouth success in the history of
the music business, David Gray's album "White Ladder" (which "Nightblindness" is from, actually) went on to sell five million albums worldwide. It's about as romantic a story about the will of one man against the big, bad monster of the music business as you could hope to find and ever since I've known of David Gray, I've never failed to be in
awe of the man, his life and what incredible stories he will get to tell his grandchildren one day.

Which makes it all the more remarkable how this song describes thoughts, feelings and emotions that I've felt in the aforementioned "hardest of times" and I've always been amazed at how someone could express through music exactly what is going through my head.

"Nightblindness" by David Gray

-----
A million to one
Outsiders
Nightblindness
Can't see

Your bright eyes are what
The time is
Twenty-five past eternity

Hear you listening
To the silence
Coming closer
Now further away

What we gonna do
When the money runs out
I wish that there was something left to say
Where we going to find the eyes to see
The bright of day

I'm sick of all the same romances
Lost chances
Cold storms

Propping mountains up
On matchsticks
Dragging baskets
Full of bones

Honey please don't stop
Your talking
'Cause there's a feeling
Won't leave me alone

What we gonna do
When the money runs out
I wish that there was something I could say
How we going to find the eyes to see
The bright of day?

What we gonna do
When the money runs out
I wish that there was something left to say
How we going to find the eyes to see
The bright of day?
-----

I don't particularly want you to fall in love with the song, be amazed by the sentiment it expresses or anything of the sort. I simply sent this to you because I haven't been having the happiest of times recently and I
think that you can tell. I've tried listening to the song over, but I fear that this emotional slump might be a little harder to get past than I previously thought.

I just figured that maybe if I were to tell you the story that I just have, it might be a good thing because that way, at least one person in the world will know what I'm thinking and it's been a while since I felt
that way.

Doesn't hurt to share, does it?

Love,
Eashan."

***

Your bright eyes are what the time is, twenty-five past eternity. :)